Evening post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1940. THE NAZI TIGER AND THE U.S. GUN

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 157, 31 December 1940, Page 6

Evening post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1940. THE NAZI TIGER AND THE U.S. GUN

To use a Churchillian phrase famous a generation ago, President Roosevelt has banged, barred, and bolted the door against appeasement. "No man," he tells the world, "can tame the tiger into a kitten by stroking it." The only remedy is striking it, and the President pledges America to the supplying of the stick—which means that America is a belligerent in every sense except the legal sense of smiting the enemy with the lethal weapon supplied. In all senses other than that, the President's fireside chat makes Nazi Germany America's enemy. The "New York Times" approaches this point—but with a wider application—when it says that "the President has served notice on Germany, Italy, and Japan that he regards them as potential, if not actual, enemies." Concerning Germany, the quoted sentence is an under-state-ment rather than an over-statement, for the President's indictment in effect names the Nazis as a force of incurable evil—an enemy of mankind and a tiger to be shot without parley. The indictment is so uncompromising that logically America is placed under an obligation to herself shoot the tiger—were it not that j somebody else (the Allies) is deemed competent to shoot it, with an American gun. In an Indian jungle, the tiger does not distinguish between the gunner and the guii-bearer. Both j are belligerents to him. But Hitler is a very complex kind of tiger, and though he may not be altogether pleased to hear from the President that his destruction would be a benefit to humanity, there is no certainty that he will simplify matters by treating the fireside chat as a declaration of war. I

An outstanding virtue of the President's definition of the situation is its clarity. There is no camouflage in his language; every statement is definite. America is the arsenal—a plain word that cannot be twisted. The purpose of the arsenal is to destroy the Axis tiger, just as much as it is the purpose of the British fighting forces to destroy the Axis tiger; and of this the tiger is well aware; but the fighting forces are at war and the arsenal is not at war — unless the chiefotiger decides otherwise. There is something of. camouflage in non-belligerency as a theoretical state; but there is no camouflage at all in the President's ! indictment of Nazism as something unclean and in his determination to 'get it killed, though not killed technically by American belligerence. The principal business, in the President's view, is the killing, not the technique—but, of course, if Britain were to fall. ... !!! Every word that the President uses in his fireside chat would be an overwhelming argument in favour of ■America's shooting the tiger should that ignoble beast escape the British guns, and escape also the American guns in British hands, Mr. Roosevelt's assurance that the United States Government will not send any tigerhunting expeditions on safari oversea is based on a certainty of Allied victory—which will cause misgivings in Berlin, will increase the panic in Rome, and will cause Tokio to make a revaluation of diplomatic threats. Aggressive diplomacy has not moved the President one inch, but has firmed his determination that the Nazis shall not, and cannot, be appeased. The "unholy alliance of power and pelf to enslave mankind" must be, will be, ended. As students of the psychology of fear, Berlin, Rome, and Tokio diplomats have threatened America with Japanese belligerence. They believed that America would fear to fight in the Pacific at a time when war was in the Atlantic. They also calculated that Britain would fear diminution of American supplies to Britain, should America be forced to send supplies westward for a Pacific war. But the only result attained by the Axis fearpsychologists is the most definite defiance and the most damning indictment that any group of States ever suffered at the hands of a non-belli-gerent whom they had hoped to suborn. The looking-glass that President Roosevelt has held up to the Axis, and to Nazi Germany in particular, flashes back a picture of moral ignominy and of coming debacle. Prior to the fireside chat, the Axis began to suggest degrees of non-belligerence, passing from the tolerable to the intolerable. It named American confiscation of German shipping as a test case. "Don't dare to say confiscation," sang the Axis chorus. President Roosevelt has not said confiscation, but he has said that to make America the arsenal

of democracy is "an emergency as serious as war itself"; he has said that, in the American war-aid to Britain, there shall be no bottlenecks;

he has also told Germany and Italy that they are going to be beaten—and this is a prophecy which the prophet is in a position to make good. In all essentials, therefore, the Axis threats have been hurled back into the teeth of their authors; Latin America has been impressed by the President's "bluntness"; and the logic and fearlessness of the utterance have inspired the Allies and all suffering subject peoples. Though America is not at war, the fireside chat constitutes a great military initiative, the shadow of which projects over the New Year. The next move lies with the Axis.